Biopolitical Times at One (plus) Year
Geron, the leading private firm trying to commercialize human embryonic stem cell products, has stated that clinical trials will occur "next year" - for the fourth year in a row.
A recent article on potential economic benefits from California's $3 billion investment in stem cell research relies on the over-the-top - yet widely-cited - scenarios spun in an economic analysis that was funded by the campaign to establish the state program . Not only that, the recent claim and the PR piece it cites share an author.
May 18th, 2007
Judging from CNN's recent episode of "Paula Zahn Now," eugenics isn't the only pseudoscience threatening to make a comeback. CNN's Senior Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta took things to a whole new level.
Cloning human beings? The "inevitability" power play
by Marcy Darnovsky
February 22nd, 2007
It's one thing to hear about the "inevitability" of human reproductive cloning from kooks. But from the editors of Nature?
Last week's Nova had an intriguing segment on members of a rural Muslim Turkish family that, strangely enough, walk on their hands and feet. What's fascinating, however, is not simply that they are quadrupeds, but how some evolutionary geneticists are using this family to put forth theories on the genetic cause of human bipedality, or our ability to walk upright.
October 26th, 2006
This week's stem cell ads reach new lows of emotional manipulation in an already degraded debate. And with the help of YouTube, they're reaching stratospheric new heights in political influence.